the King's supporters demanded decisive action against the increasingly bold domestic opposition, but John III was growing weak and refrained from forcefully acting against his enemies and pursuing his aspirations. The 1691 marriage of Jakub Ludwik Sobieski, the King's eldest son, with Hedwig of Neuburg, resulted in moderate improvement of relations with Vienna. The last years of the reign of the ailing king saw the disorder, lawlessness, factional infighting and anarchy overcoming the Commonwealth. The monarch was not even able to control the feud between his wife Marie Casimire and their son Jakub. John III's death in 1696 commenced the longest, most contentious and corrupted interregnum in the country's history. Commonwealth–Saxony personal union Early Wettin rule, Great Northern War The situation in the Commonwealth had changed to some degree after the election of 1697 and the unexpected ascent of Augustus II the Strong of the House of Wettin, the ruler (as Frederick Augustus I) of the affluent Electorate of Saxony. He invested large sums, obtained foreign support and converted to Catholicism to ensure his election, but the voting process did not give him a clear victory. The early favorite, François Louis, Prince of Conti, had many supporters and was proclaimed a king-elect by the Primate, Michał Stefan Radziejowski. Augustus and his followers acted however more quickly and decisively than the French prince, whose belated arrival in Danzig area, where he sailed, but was blocked by supporters of Augustus from landing in the city, was not enough to prevent the Saxon from gaining the throne. This result was confirmed, after the initial unrest, by the "pacification sejm" in 1699. The personal union of the Commonwealth and Saxony lasted for over half a century, but joined two basically dissimilar political and economic entities, each of which resented the close integration and unification persistently attempted by Augustus. This difficulty naturally checked the ruler's "absolutist" tendencies in both states and his pursuit of the Wettin family dynastic domination. The ambitious and able Augustus, who aspired to follow in the footsteps of Louis XIV without regard for the practical limitations of his particular situation, weakened by his adventurous undertakings both Poland and Saxony. Augustus II stationed the powerful Saxon army within the Commonwealth and applied various external pressures in order to alter its political system, which only alienated the Polish nobility and further demoralized the broader society, relegated to watching the corrupt, but unsuccessful at